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Rotating Door Is Damning

April 28th, 2014

The weird career-ending injury suffered by Brian Price didn’t slow down the revolving door of players in and out of One Buc Palace.

One leg of building a good football team is to establish consistency. Teams that change front offices, coaches and quarterbacks more than some change their briefs leads to trainwreck organizations (yes, Joe is looking right at you, Jimmy Haslam of the Browns).

And one way to build consistency is to draft well.

As Joe has pointed out earlier today, former Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik had some bad luck with high picks getting injured or going mental. That is one reason why general manager Jason Licht and Lovie Smith are here.

But Joe didn’t realize just how unstable the Bucs were with their drafts, as detailed by Pat Yasinskas of ESPN.

The Bucs presently have 17 of their own draft picks on the roster. That ties them with the Jacksonville Jaguars for the second fewest. The Chicago Bears have the fewest with only 15 original draft picks. The Green Bay Packers lead the league with 33.

What’s most striking about Tampa Bay comes when you look back at the draft classes of 2009 and 2010. Players from those drafts should be entering their prime. But, outside of defensive tackle Gerald McCoy, that’s not the case for the Bucs.

McCoy is the only player from those two drafts still on Tampa Bay’s roster. It would be easy to blame the lack of draft picks on the roster on the change of regimes from Mark Dominik and Greg Schiano to Jason Licht and Lovie Smith. But it wouldn’t be accurate.

So only the Bears have a worse number at keeping draft picks? Hhhmmm?

But this goes to show how a team can sink to the dregs of the league when draft picks don’t come through. It’s like having a noose around one’s neck.

No wonder we were 4-12….and….its not just the QB!!! We lost depth and squandered many picks. Somehow, I think the talent was there with most but the mental meltdowns took its toll.
We should just draft nothing but Olinemen in the first two rounds for the next 3 years…then I think our record would improve.
One exception….Sammy @ 7.

If Sammy Watkins, Greg Robinson, Clowney, or Mack isn’t available at pick #7 I say the Bucs should try and trade down. Trading down would give the team more picks and still be able to draft a good player like Aaron Donald, Odell Beckham, or CJ Mosley.

Teams that change front offices, coaches and QUARTERBACKS more than some change their briefs leads to trainwreck organizations.
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Sound familiar?

What surprises me is that so many players who are run off from here, go on to have decent careers somewhere else.

Sometimes I get the feeling that players just don’t want to play for Tampa. Even most FA’s when given the choice between Tampa and Cleveland would probably choose Cleveland. We have gained the reputation as one of the worst franchises and rightfully so. It’s kind of ironic how JOE pointing a finger at Haslam is like calling the kettle black. It’s not like Tampa has been world beaters in it’s 40+ year history.

Let’s put together a decade of winning football before we criticize other teams first.

Exactly….a very reasonable approach….the players you list are solid picks….I think 1 or 2 will be there…If we can’t get Watkins, I like Mack….and if we can’t get them…trade down.
I like trading down for Mosley or Ebron.

Joe
Have you made any headway on the redirect issue? It only happens to me on your site and I can’t stay on there for more than 30 seconds anymore with my iPhone.

Nope. Unfortunately, Joe’s learned it’s a harmless but annoying glitch that’s been common for mobile-only readers on several major sites over the past year. A google search would reveal how the NBC family of sites and others have approached it. Sorry. It’s only a problem for a small percentage of Joe’s mobile-only readers. Hopefully, a fix will be found.–Joe

Lovie led a team that didn’t win enough otherwise he would still be in Chicago instead of Tampa. I second Bonzai’s sentiment about wishing Schiano were still here on draft day. Virtually everyone of the picks made while he was schooling Rockstar on the finer art of drafting are still currently on the roster. That is impressive regardless of his lack of success coaching in Tampa. Lovie is a more successful and proven head coach, but I doubt we’ll see as good drafts as we did the past two…thank you GS and keep those toes on the line at your next future NFL coordinator stop (cough…Foxborough, MA…cough)

@Luvmybucs Exactly! As a Bears/Bucs fan I can tell you that Angelo would occasionally get lucky, but most of the time it was just bad… I could go into it deeper but I don’t see the point in kicking a dead horse.

I will just say this to put it in perspective… the bears O-line has been so bad since Cutler got there…Angelo tried every year to bring in free agents or draft them, but always failed miserably. Phil Emery and Marc Trestman came in and fixed it in one off-season. They went from one of the worst in the league to one of the best in one off-season.

I would be shocked if the Bucs dont trade down as many times as they are able in the first round, just to accumulate picks in 2-4th rounds. And the more I think about it the more I want them to. Especially for 2nd and 3rd rd picks. THere are going to be some real steals there.

Ok, go back three years to our last game in London. Remember whose team beat the living daylights out of the Bucs and was so demoralizing our team unraveled and ROM got fired? Oh yeah, it was the Chicago Bears who kicked our rear ends all over the field, Coached by Lovie. So if all his drafts were bad and he did not have the talent he should have had because he had DeAngelo, a former Buc Scout, calling the shots as his GM. So what does that tell you about how talented a HC Lovie is and that he was able to surround himself with great Assistants too. Now if he had had Licht bringing in his talent for him he wouldn’t be here. We are so lucky. He would already have won some SBs and Chicago would have never let him go.

Have to give Rah some of that blame as well. HC’s have a lot to do with the player selection in the draft too (case in point I’m sure JF5 was the awesome work of Morris brought to Domick’s attention by Rah). I blame Raheem for crappy drafts more so than Dom (but it is still on them both)

The last few years have been pitiful. I almost forgot about Buc football if it wasn’t for D. Martin, LVD, and GMC. It really sucks about AC and Bowers, and B. Price for that matter. Whom ever the Coach or GM was, it was just transition period. The players are all excited and that excites me. They want to play for L&L and I wan’t L&L to draft good. Tic Toc